A
star's death was once thought to be a simple affair.
The star cast off a shell of glowing gas and lived
the remainder of its time as a white dwarf. This
collection of images, however, is forcing researchers
to rethink their theories of how Sun-like stars
die. In particular, they believe the stars' intricate
patterns, which resemble everything from lawn
sprinklers to goblets, may be woven by a star's
interaction with unseen companions, including
planets, brown dwarfs or smaller stars. The question
researchers now ask is how do so-called planetary
nebulae (a name that was given them long before
astronomers knew that these objects were actually
dying stars) shape themselves. Hubble's ability
to detect intricate details is giving researchers
plenty to digest. From this collection, they found
unexplained disks and "donuts" of dust girdling
a star, strange glowing "red blobs" placed along
the edge of some nebulae and jets of high-speed
particles. Researchers say that these images give
us a preview of our own Sun's fate some 5 billion
years from now.